The advert titled “Mitt Romney: Be Not Afraid” by Mitt Romney during the 2012 elections has significant lessons in political communication.
Ethical issues in this ad
This ad amounts to “misrepresentation of the opponent’s messages” and mudslinging. The Romney ad stated that the Obama administration had declared “war on religion” (usatoday.com). It took advantage of the opinion in the San Antonio Express- News that had the following words “Obama’s Insurance Direction Declares War on Religion” (usatoday.com). As such, the ad was blowing a newspaper opinion out of proportion and misrepresenting facts. In actual sense, the Obama administration had required employers to provide health insurance that is inclusive of free contraception (usatoday.com). Since Catholics and conservatives are opposed to contraception, the ad purposed at mudslinging Obama’s well-intentioned health care plan.
The advert had an aspect of communicating the message for which the source is unknown or unaccountable. In as much as the ad claims that the message “war on religion” came from the San Antonio Express, the newspaper never said that in any of its editorial or news article (usatoday.com). The opinion from which the Romney ad borrows the message was an opinion by a Republican supporter who was obviously biased in his views. Therefore, the credibility of the source of Romney’s assertion is questionable and unaccounted for and it is unknown.
Relating ethical issues in the ad to theories on political communication
Jurgen Habermas ethical system can be used to explain the Romney ad. Habermas states that valid, ethical rules are those that which all the people in communication can agree or be in consensus. He has two conditions for consensus on the ethicality; communicative intent and strategic intent (Cheney, May & Munshi, 2011). Whereas communicative intent is ideal and presents agreeable facts, strategic intent, which is manipulative and misrepresents facts to achieve the intended end (Brant, & Voltmer, 2011). The Romney ad was not ethical. In a subtle reference, toe the unethical Romney ads, president Obama called upon politicians to practice ethical campaigns and uphold respect for facts and the people of the USA (natcom.org). The Romney ad was strategic-it intended to show the Catholic people and those whose faith is opposed to certain contraception methods that the Obama’s healthcare plan was against their faith. Herbemas stated that strategic communication-in the manner described here-results in distorted communication (Cheney, May & Munshi, 2011). The Romney ad manages to distort the actual intention of a healthcare plan by coming up with unfounded, manipulative, and inaccurate information, which it communicates to the public.
The Romney ad also used aspects of Rawls theory, which calls upon just living and coexistence in societies. Rawls calls upon responsible and equitable political responsibility to share resources among competing interests. A part of Rawls theory is the recognition that the political interests include complex and conflicting belief systems along religious and other lines that evoke emotions. Political ads use counter-cultural religious movements to “access a public voice” by cultivating and generating controversy (Mcnair, 2011). The Romney ad aims on evoking conflicting interests among deeply religious and conservative people versus the liberals. The conservatives are holding on to their opposition against contraception methods against liberal employees who would like to enjoy the full-scale of Obama’s health care plan including the contraception. Going by Rawl’s assertion, the idea of overlapping consensus can work in this case, whereby none of the competing political sides misrepresents facts to such as extent as to cause conflicting interests and present the other as biased, oppressive, and incapable of handling conflicting interests among its people.
References
Barrack Obama's Call to Restore Ethics in Politics. (n.d.). Barrack Obama's Call to Restore Ethics in Politics. Retrieved October 3, 2014, from http://www.natcom.org/CommCurrentsArticle.aspx?id=1081
Brant, K & Voltmer K (2011) Political Communication in Postmodern Democracy: Callengins the primary of Politics. Palgrave Macmillan. Eastbourne. UK
Cheney, G., May, S., & Munshi, D. (2011).The handbook of communication ethics. New York: Routledge. New York
Mcnair, B. (2011) An Introduction to political communication. Routledge. Taylor & Francis. New York http://storage.globalcitizen.net/data/topic/knowledge/uploads/20130412164339753295_Book_An-Introduction-to-Political-Communication.pdf
Mitt Romney: Be Not Afraid. (n.d.).USATODAY.COM. Retrieved October 3, 2014, from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/political-ad-tracker/video/822070/mitt-romney-be-not-afraid
